11/04/2009

3 comments:

Interesting, but of course a mis-attribution. (Its acually just common, apocryphal wordplay on the old English addage about how "its darkest just before the dawn.")

Your clip is merely one more in a cavalcade of gaffes and mistakes by the hapless John McCain.

But it you want a real Mao quote, you could have cited this:

"Serious research must be done; carefully plan to kill some large groups to solve some initial problems. Tianjing is planning to kill 1500 people within this year. Kill 500 first before April, once this plan is accomplished, we have the upper hand, I hope Shanghai, Nanjing, Tsengdao, Kwangzhou, Wuhan plus other large and middle cities do have solid plans to kill some large groups of people."

What did Anita Dunn actually say about Mao? I believe she included Mao and Mother Theresa in her list of favorite philosophers. Did you actually read an enedited transscript of Dunn's speech or are you basing your comments on the FOX News clip. I didn't hear the speech, but I believe Dunn's statement included the phrase "the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is, you're going to make choices"

I think people will sometimes use this kind of reference so they can include a couple of choice quotes that help give them credibility. I believe Lee Atwater used the same Mao quote used by Dunn. In the free market place of ideas, you're bound to run into a few things that you find distasteful.

How many people did Mao kill? How many did Sadam Hussein kill? I believe Rumsefeldt is pictured shaking Sadam's hand back when the US was backing the gasing of Iranians. At the same time, Sadam was no doubt killing his own people and in Saudia Arabia heads were rolling.

I suppose killing a few million innocents is worse that killing a couple hundred thousand. But attributing a quote to Mao is one thing, being a party to mass slaughter in the name of oil is another.

Stalin once said "The death of one is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic." So it goes with collectivists who (misguidedly) think that ends justify means, and who think that they have history on their side.

The idea that we are in the middle east fighting for the oil is patent nonsense. We have all the oil we need right here in the US - either in shale deposits, or in huge off-shore deposits that are readily exploitable if only we could get politics out of the way. That "no blood for oil" shibboleth hit the apex of stupidity during the early yesrs of the Afghanistan conflict, when it was used to deride the US action in that terrrorist haven -- a region that has in fact NO OIL.But it sure sounded good...

As for Rummy being chummy with Saddam, well, sure. Its an old addage (Lao Tzu, I think) that says "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." That, I think, sums up our support for the Iraqi's in the 1980's when not only was Iran hostile to the US, but it was openly supporting terrorism against our ally, Isreal. The use of WMD (gas) in that war was not anticipated, and was indeed unfortunate, as it was the first of many forms of WMD that Saddam developed and evenually used on his own people.

That is the problem with geo-politics -- you sometimes back the wrong SOB.

As for politicians (or partisan hacks) who quote psychopathic mass murderers, they really ought to expand their reading lists. There are plenty of wise and quotable men and women in history who don't have the blood of millions on their hands.